Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Oh for a good water pump

Over the last week-end, I thought we were suffering from another bad water pump. We delayed working on it until this morning (it was a holiday weekend for me to.) Actually the pump worked if you knew how to baby it along. Even Sandy learned how to keep it working.

Today we switched it out with my backup and said to myself, "another job well done." However, it was not to be. When I turned the pump on, the backup pump acted just like the one I removed. That was not a good sign. Our initial diagnosis was that the case was leaking air into the chamber. But with two pumps exhibiting the same characteristics, I decided that maybe there was something else that needed a closer look.

To resolve the problem between either the case or the input filter, we connected a single tube from the input to a 3 gallon pail of water. The pump worked exactly as we'd expect it to. So the problem was a leaky input filter line. That line has about 8 joints that might leak, so we just took it apart. We changed a few things around, reassembled it and gave the filter bowel an extra twist just for good measure.

That fixed the problem. Needless to say, I was one happy camper. I was also very disgusted with myself for missing the problem in the first place. We live and learn.

I know I should not complain, but we've now gone 8 days with no rain in the area, which is most unusual. Yes, we had more than our fair share of moisture earlier, and the crops look great. But to put it mildly, the ground here in the yard is getting very dry. They brought in 20 loads of fill last week and while the grass took a beating in the track, the tires almost didn't leave a track. Our trusty weather man says that there will be no rain for the rest of the week. Okay, I guess we'll live with it.

With the water pump fixed, I dare say that we're developing a mild case of "hitch itch". The current plan is at least by Friday and Sandy said yesterday, "perhaps we need to head north on Thursday". We're ready.